Strangers in Paradise: An Innocent Man
by ofperkins
Summary: It's been ten years since they found the book in the desert, and a recent arrival has distracted four friends from other matters. But a visit from an old friend looks set to change all that, forcing them into a world in which to survive, they are forced to learn. Spoilers, minor suggestive themes and mild violence.
1. Prologue

_The lives of people like Jordan, Rachel, Maddy and Brittany are the sort of lives that can't stay what one might call "normal" for very long. Something interesting was always bound to happen to them, if only a small thing. Finding a book in the desert, ending up on a beautiful but deserted island, finding that their host is a strange, reclusive man writing in a big book, being asked to go on a dangerous rescue mission, finding several hundred letters waiting at home, proposal, marriage, pregnancy, birth... it never stopped. And today was no exception. Of course, you got used to it after a while, but there was always the odd thing that shocked them. Mostly it was the appearance of a tall man dressed in black that shocked them, mainly because they knew so little about him. However, sometimes the bizarre events that happened to the four of them stemmed even more bizarre events, and little did they know that it was one of these that was going to throw their lives into turmoil again..._

* * *

**Prologue**

Rachel was, not to put too fine a point on it, exhausted. She was still recovering from her pregnancy, and the primary result of her pregnancy was not helping. It was worth the trouble, mind you. Jane was a regular gem... the only problem, of course, was the fact that she regularly awoke at two in the morning demanding either a feed or a change of nappy. Jordan was working wonders in doing his best to get Rachel some sleep as well, and Brittany had stayed the night out here once or twice on the really bad days. All in all, they were making progress.

The morning of the fifteenth of July was a dazzlingly bright day. At ten o'clock Maddy and Brittany showed up for toast and coffee... after all, Jane was one month old today, and that made it a special occasion. Toast, coffee (Brittany's coffee, of course) and a bit of a chat. Seemingly normal, at least for a while.

On the stroke of half past eleven, there was a knock on the door. The four of them shared confused glances – they hadn't invited anyone else, and plus it was Sunday, so there wouldn't be any mail. After a moment, Rachel got to her feet and went out to the loungeroom, over to the door and pulled it open.

Standing out in the sun was a tall man, but not in black. He was wearing a brown tunic, a hat and a pair of heavy goggles, and had a satchel slung over his shoulder. His skin was sun-browned and his chin was covered by a neat beard.

He squinted at Rachel as she opened the door, then fiddled with his goggles briefly. He took a step back, then forward. Then he pulled a small piece of paper out of one pocket of his tunic and looked down at it.

"I do beg your pardon," he said calmly. "I was looking for..." he fiddled with his goggles again, "Rachel. Yes, that looks right."

"That would be me," said Rachel. "What can I do for you?"

The man poked his goggles again, and he seemed to see Rachel clearly for the first time. He smiled. "You could start by telling me how you managed to change so much in the space of ten years."

Rachel paused, a little embarrassed. Ten years, she thought. Let me see... Oh, good heavens. It couldn't be... could it?

"Atrus?"

The man smiled again. "Well done. Good to see you. How have you been?"

* * *

After Rachel had invited Atrus inside and Jordan, Maddy and Brittany had been filled in on who was at the door, Rachel decided it was time for Atrus to do some explaining.

"You must tell us," said Rachel to Atrus, "how you got here."

"I walked," replied Atrus, in his infuriatingly benign way.

"You walked." Rachel's brain spun as she tried to simultaneously keep from getting frustrated and also work out where he could have walked from.

"Indeed." Atrus picked up a slice of toast. "Do let me fill you in."

* * *

Atrus settled into the chair in the loungeroom, holding a barely touched cup of coffee in one hand.

"After we left Riven, Catherine and I decided that we could never live on Myst again, after what our sons did to us. It wasn't even worth trying to rebuild there, so I wrote us somewhere else. A... temporary home, you might say. Until we could find somewhere more permanent. We busied ourselves with trying to find as many survivors of the D'ni fall as we could, and we found a fair few. We decided it was worth a restoration attempt.

"At first we tried to rebuild the D'ni city. Some of it was still standing, after all. But when we were exploring one of the Guild houses, we found a long-abandoned book linking to a world known as Terahnee. It was – hang on... I should probably give you a brief backstory of the D'ni race here...

"About... oh, ten thousand years ago, give or take, the D'ni were part of a civilisation called the Ronay, who lived on an Age called Garternay. They had the power to write these books, these books that linked to other worlds... anyway, I'm getting off track. About ten thousand years ago, as I was saying, it was discovered that the destruction of Garternay was imminent, and a mass evacuation was ordered. Most of the Ronay evacuated to an idyllic – and massive – Age called Terahnee, but a few smaller groups broke off and went elsewhere. One such group was the D'ni, who believed that you should have to work to survive, so they went to a great cavern in another Age and built a city from the rock.

"Anyway, whilst exploring the ruins of D'ni, we found a book linking to Terahnee. When I saw the luxury that the Terhanee people lived in, I first considered moving the D'ni survivors to Terahnee. But when I discovered that the paradise of Terahnee was built on slave labour, I changed my mind. However, when we (the D'ni, that is) came to Terahnee we inadvertantly brought a disease with us. The D'ni, according to Catherine, had been living with the bug for so long that they had built up immunity to it, but the Terahnee had no such protection, and almost all of the Terahnee – over two hundred million people – died. On that note, we returned to the D'ni cavern, sealed the book linking to Terahnee, and turned back to the restoration. But by then I had realised that a restoration of the city was not the way to go about restoring D'ni. Instead, I wrote a new Age for the survivors to resettle on, an Age called Releeshahn.

"Once we had relocated the D'ni there, Catherine and I set to work settling on the surface of the D'ni Age, which happens to be this world. With the help of the D'ni, we built ourselves a home on the surface, which we called Tomahna."

"Tomahna..." mused Brittany. "Doesn't that mean 'home'?"

"Yes," smiled Atrus, "it does."

It was probably at about this point that Jane, who had been sound asleep in the chair next to Atrus, woke. She looked up at Atrus with her piercing blue eyes, then extended a finger and poked Atrus' arm. He jumped and looked down, following the small arm, then smiled. Jane also smiled and made a small noise.

"I see you have a daughter," he said to Rachel as he reached down and poked Jane, who giggled.

"Yes..." Rachel smiled, containing her own giggles. "That's Jane. Jane, this is Atrus."

Jane turned her head on one side and looked at Atrus. Atrus turned his head on one side and looked at Jane, who laughed.

"Catherine and I have a daughter as well... about the same age," mused Atrus, continuing to look at Jane. "We call her Yeesha."

"That's 'laughter', isn't it?" Brittany asked.

"I'm surprised you remember so much," replied Atrus. "Yes, 'Yeesha' means 'laughter'."

"Just one question," piped up Maddy, who appeared to have been writing all this in her journal.

"Yes?"

"How do you spell 'Releeshahn'?"

* * *

Atrus declined Jordan and Rachel's invitation to stay the night, saying he needed to get home.

"I would like you to come and visit us, though," he said as he was leaving. "I'd like to show you four Tomahna and Releeshahn. Why don't you come tomorrow?"

"We'd love to," said Jordan, speaking for all four of them, "but how will we get there?"

"I left a linking book on the shelf in the Myst library," replied Atrus. "You still have the Myst book, I presume?" When he received an affirmative answer, he smiled. "Good... I'll see you tomorrow, then." And with that, he was gone.


	2. Marble

**1 – Marble**

Rachel opened her eyes. She was standing. Well, she thought, that's a good start.

Jane was sitting on the ground, or rather the wooden planks that made up the ground, near the water's edge, reaching out for the wooden mast poking up from the water. Rachel reached down quickly and picked her up before she fell in the water, then straightened up, went over to the stairs and up to the cog plateau to survey the island. Considering the fact that virtually nobody had set foot on the island for ten years, it was in relatively good condition, though definitely showing signs of age.

She darted back down the stairs and walked slowly across to the clearing, up the path and into the library. The intricate panelling of the room was visible under a thin layer of dust. Rachel could see slight marks in the dust, indicating that someone had been here fairly recently. On the shelf opposite the door, two open books sat. One was covered in dust, with only the small square of light shining through the dust on the right page showing that it still linked to Antares, the harvest world that Atrus had written during his imprisonment. The other book was not covered in dust, and the panel on the right page showed a brightly lit sunroom.

"Seems dustier than I remember," said Jordan, as he entered the library with Maddy and Brittany behind him.

"Very much so," replied Rachel. "It might be worth spending a bit of time in the future getting the place cleaned up. Right now, however, we should get to Tomahna and see Atrus. He's probably dying to show us around."

* * *

Atrus was dying to show the five of them around Tomahna, and began by trying to show them the kitchen, the main bedroom, his study and Catherine's lab all at the same time. Fortunately Catherine managed to restrain him slightly, whilst greeting Jordan, Rachel, Maddy, Brittany and Jane, all with Yeesha cradled in one arm. Rachel was in awe.

Eventually the eight of them bundled into the kitchen and sat down to catch up on what they'd missed over the past years over a few cups of tea brewed by Catherine.

"The Guild of Stonemasons helped us construct Tomahna," said Atrus, "even though it didn't involve carving things out of stone, which is what they normally do all day."

"They know a lot about making things stay up in the air," added Catherine. "Plus, a lot of this is nara, which is useful but has to be handled properly."

Seeing the questioning looks coming from his guests, Atrus explained. "Nara is sort of like a D'ni alloy. It's made of basically lots of old rocks poured into a big machine, which melts them and then cools them down to make nara. It's quite lightweight, but very strong."

"That does sound useful," said Jordan, giving Rachel a sideways glance. It was obvious that she, too, could remember the sheer strength of the gates in Riven's Gate Room, and remembered wondering what it was made out of.

"Oh, it is, it is," said Atrus enthusiastically. "You can make buildings, machines, parts of machines, vehicles, signs..." Rachel's attention wandered off for a while, coming back in time to hear "...plates, cups, cutlery, floorboards and windows."

"Windows?" That last one had confused Rachel a little.

"Yes, well, if you want to be able to see out the windows then it's not such a great idea, but down in the cavern where there's not a whole lot of light anyway they're quite good."

Rachel laughed, hoping this was intended to be a joke. Atrus smiled. Jane did not smile, but made a protesting noise and began poking Rachel repeatedly, who sighed.

"She's hungry. Excuse me for a minute, will you?" Rachel stood up, picked up Jane and retreated into Atrus and Catherine's bedroom.

* * *

When Rachel returned, she put Jane down next to Yeesha. The two of them looked at each other for a few seconds, then began to giggle. Rachel looked up at Catherine.

"Best friends," said Catherine, and Rachel laughed.

* * *

The six of them sat and talked for hours, and Jane and Yeesha talked to each other as well. How it is possible for two infants, one month old each, to talk to each other for many hours, Rachel would never know, but it was interesting catching up with Atrus and Catherine after so long. As Atrus said, ten years is not long in scope of the D'ni history, but in the lives of people like them it was quite a while.

Eventually it started to get dark, and Yeesha and Jane both decided it was time for dinner. Atrus and Catherine insisted that Jordan, Rachel, Maddy and Brittany stay for dinner. By the time they had had dinner, though, they discovered that it was going to be a bit difficult to get back to the volcano compound in the dark. During the day, Atrus had said, the volcano was visible on the horizon, albeit a long way off, but at night they couldn't see where to go.

"Well, you'd be welcome to stay here," Atrus proposed, and Catherine agreed. Brittany, however, could see the logistical problem with this idea.

"There's not a whole lot of comfortable places to sleep here, you know," she put in. "If there was only one of us, it would be fine, but as there's four – sorry, five," she corrected herself hastily as Rachel smiled and lifted Jane slightly, "it might not be so comfortable."

"You've got a point there, Brittany," said Jordan. "I think we ought to go to Myst... we'll be perfectly comfortable there."

Atrus and Catherine attempted to protest, but they saw the sense in what Jordan and Brittany had said. Atrus dug out the four sleeping bags and lamp that they had used ten years ago, but said that he would rather not come with them, if that was all right with them. It was painful enough going there on salvage missions, he said, let alone for something... well... something like this.

* * *

It was amazing how well matches kept even if you left them locked in a safe for ten years, Maddy had thought as she lit the furnace, and considering the rather cold temperature on Myst tonight, she was glad of that. With the furnace now roaring and the crashes from the tree outside having subsided, she, Jordan and Brittany settled down for the night. Rachel was still in the library (Jane had demanded a bed-time snack), so they set up her sleeping bag as well. When Rachel returned, they took the time to discuss the events of the last few days, and how nice it was to be back on Myst, before sleep overwhelmed them and they dozed off.

At two in the morning Jane woke up and decided that everyone had slept long enough.

* * *

Saavedro popped a berry into his mouth. He chewed it, slowly, thoughtfully, then burst out into maniacal laughter, having no reason to restrain himself. Nothing could go wrong, he thought. Nothing! I planned this to perfection. I had twenty years to think up my revenge. Granted, I was insane for most of it, but still...

Tomorrow... tomorrow I shall see you again, Atrus, my old friend. Tomorrow you will know the pain that I've known for these past twenty years. Just you wait...

* * *

When Brittany stepped out of the air of the Tomahna sunroom, she was greeted by Catherine cradling Yeesha.

"Atrus was just going to grab something for your trip to Releeshahn," Catherine said. "He shouldn't be too long... unless he decides to check over the whole house first, in which case... well, he could be hours." By this time, Jordan, Rachel, Maddy and Jane had all materialised behind Brittany. "Perhaps you should wait in his study."

As they were going inside, Catherine touched Rachel on the shoulder. "You look exhausted, Rachel. Why don't you leave Jane out here? She and Yeesha will keep each other amused."

Rachel smiled. "That would be great, Catherine. I really appreciate it."

Catherine also smiled. "Just because I'm Rivenese doesn't mean I don't know what you're going through. Yeesha has been enough of a handful."

Atrus' study was a strange place, if only because it was so orderly in comparison with the rest of Tomahna. Behind his desk on the far side of the room was a large grey book bearing a D'ni number five on the cover. Across from that was a small glass dome lit by an orange fire-marble.

Rachel walked slowly over to the glass dome. Inside, sitting on a small pedastel, was a large book, bound in red and locked with a glinting nara padlock. Emblazoned on the cover was the word "Releeshahn".

As the four of them looked down at the book, some muffled voices floated in from the sunroom, then the door opened and Atrus came in, wearing a light brown coat.

"Ah, my friends, I see you found the Releeshahn book. Catherine tells me you've been here for some time... I'm sorry if I kept you waiting. Since we'll be gone for a few days, I needed to secure some of my things..." He pulled a thin book out of his pocket. "I also wanted to bring you this. It's a journal I kept whilst I was writing Releeshahn. I thought you might find it interesting to read about what I'd hoped to achieve and compare it to what the Age truly is..." He paused, and Jordan took the book from him. "Well... just let me get my keys to unlock Releeshahn and we'll be off." He wandered over to his desk. "And I'm interested in hearing more about what you've been up to recently..."

* * *

It was all going so well. A visit with Atrus, Jordan was thinking, that didn't end up with something going bizarrely wrong. He should have known it was too good to be true.

The air near the Releeshahn book shimmered, and reformed itself into the shape of a man, tall but stooped over slightly, wearing an interesting assortment of tattered rags, his hair all over the place but mainly stretching down to his shoulders. His eyes widened slightly as he saw the people standing in the room, looking at him in shock, but his maniacal smile did not waver as he grabbed the orange marble from beside the book and hurled it towards the curtains and tapestries.

The marble shattered, and the curtains caught fire instantly. Atrus ran back around the desk, trying in vain to contain the fire. Whilst the five of them were distracted by the flames, the man pulled a small leather-bound book from the folds of what remained of his clothes and brought it down on the glass dome shielding the Releeshahn book. As Jordan, Rachel, Maddy, Brittany and Atrus spun around as one, he lifted the Releeshahn book from the shattered dome, flicked the small book open and raised a hand in the air, then paused. Jordan lunged for him, but stumbled over the flaming curtain as the man planted his hand resolutely on the small book and vanished, leaving the air shimmering and ringing. The small book toppled to the floor, still open to the last page, where the panel glowed invitingly.

Whilst Atrus was consumed with the flames that were consuming his study, Jordan stumbled towards the book lying open on the floor with flames licking their way across the carpet towards it. With no thought in his mind except that of the Releeshahn book, he barely felt Rachel's hand catch his shoulder as he stretched his arm towards the open book...


	3. Ashes

_Thank you to my readers for being so patient, and I apologise for the gap of months between updates..._

* * *

**2 – Ashes**

"All right," said Rachel, pacing back and forth over the rock, "let me get this straight. You saw this man link out in the middle of Atrus' flaming study, so instead of doing something logical like picking up the book so that it didn't burn so that we could all go through after him later, you bent down and linked after him?"

Jordan stared at the cloudless sky of J'nanin for a few seconds, his lips moving soundlessly, then looked at Rachel. "Yep, that about covers it."

Rachel swore under her breath. Maddy also swore, just not under her breath.

Jordan got to his feet. "Hey, look on the bright side."

Rachel folded her arms. "And what might that be?"

Jordan paused. "Can I have some time to think about that, please?"

* * *

"Do you know why I'm not married?"

Atrus dropped a large pile of burnt books onto his observatory table, then glanced up at Brittany, who had just emerged from the elevator.

"Because you're not brilliant with child care?" guessed Atrus.

"That's basically it," sighed Brittany, attempting to calm Jane down unsuccessfully. "I've helped Rachel before, but still... Jane's been poking me for half an hour now."

"She's probably just hungry," replied Atrus, going back to sorting the books. This was just like the Myst fires all over again, except Sirrus and Achenar hadn't started the fires this time. "Might be a good idea to feed her."

"Feed her?" Brittany leant herself carefully against the railing on the staircase. "Feed her what?"

"Jordan says Rachel usually breastfeeds her," replied Atrus vaguely, his mind now totally on the pile of books.

"The things I do for Rachel..." muttered Brittany darkly under her breath as she turned back to the elevator.

* * *

The J'nanin night was incredibly clear, but also incredibly cold, and Rachel, Jordan and Maddy, wrapped in Jordan's coat, huddled together in the small room under the tower. They had spent the day wandering the island to little avail. The main features of the island were four strange tusk-like objects stretching a good fifty, sixty feet up into the air. One of them was at the exact centre of the island and bore the tower in which the man with the crazy hair had locked himself at the top, and a small greenhouse-like room at the bottom. The other three tusks each had a single door set into the side of them, but this did not help in the slightest – one door was too high up to reach, one was locked and there was a large rock in front of the third. This was, they had decided, probably one of Atrus' Ages – after surveying the rest of the island and finding a series of light reflectors, some controls that moved a catwalk up and down and a large plant able to amplify noises, they came to the conclusion that they needed to employ these bizarre artefacts in order to open the tusks. First, however, it was decided that they had to get into the tower above this room.

As the three of them talked about their next course of action, Saavedro paced around the tower room in a circle, tapping the cover of the Releeshahn book as he moved. Each time round, as he passed the elevator shaft, he looked in the window, but still there was nothing.

Saavedro turned away from the elevator shaft and walked over to the pit in the centre of the room. He gripped the railing with his free hand and peered down at the cage containing the book linking him with Narayan. It was tempting to go there now. But once he went there, he couldn't get back here. Not that he wanted to ever set foot on J'nanin again; twenty years here was more than enough. But he'd worked too hard on this plan to have it all fall apart just because Atrus didn't know where to find him.

* * *

By midnight nobody was asleep. Saavedro continued to pace the upstairs tower, occasionally pausing to glance down the elevator shaft. Downstairs, the three companions still huddled together to avoid the cold, but none of them slept. Rachel rolled over to face Jordan.

"Jordan."

Jordan rolled over to face Rachel.

"Yes, love?"

"What are we going to do?"

"The same thing we did on Myst, and the same thing we did on Riven... we're going to battle our way out using our wits."

Rachel sat up. "I'm worried about Jane."

Jordan also sat up. "Worried about her? She's on Tomahna, which in itself is a lot safer than here, and she's with Brittany, Atrus and Catherine. She's safer on Tomahna with them than here with us."

"I suppose..."

Jordan paused briefly, then put his arm around Rachel's shoulders. She smiled, and they kissed. Maddy looked away pointedly.

* * *

_{Brittany's journal, 18-7}_

_This really gives me a better appreciation of what Rachel goes through on a day-to-day basis. I hope the others get back soon. I would take Jane home, but I really don't feel that I should leave Atrus and Catherine with all this mess to clean up by themselves. We're having enough trouble as it is. Atrus said he would usually have asked the new D'ni to lend some hands, but he can't – that's part of the problem._

* * *

Dawn broke over J'nanin earlier than Jordan, Rachel and Maddy expected, but within minutes they were on their feet, spurred on by the few hours of sleep they had managed to grab, and they started to examine the room that they had spent the night in.

One of the first things they noticed was that on top of a rickety looking hammock (which they had discounted last night because it didn't look hugely strong) was a small hand-made journal with not many pieces of paper in it. Jordan, as he flicked it open and paged through it, realised it must have been written by the man who stole the Releeshahn book. His talk of revenge on Atrus, Sirrus and Achenar was quite brutal. Nevertheless, Jordan realised that there must be more to the journal than this; it had just been removed by this man – Saavedro, Jordan read. He dropped the journal into his satchel.

Whilst Jordan picked up all the pieces of paper that had gone everywhere when he stupidly dropped the journal into his satchel, Rachel and Maddy had wandered over to a large cylindrical capsule in the corner of the room. Considering it was standing in the middle of what appeared to be railings leading up into the roof, they made a fairly good guess that this was their way up to the tower, and they relayed this to Jordan. He agreed, and the three of them crowded into the fairly spacious elevator. Maddy flicked the large switch on the wall outside.

The door slid closed with a smooth thud, almost taking Rachel's finger off. Then something very strange happened. The cage-like device that ringed the elevator began to rotate slowly around the elevator. When it had turned about half a circle, it stopped, then snapped rapidly back into place. Having done this, the elevator itself now began to rise. After ten seconds or so, it stopped with a slight jerk.

Rachel, who was closest to the door, looked through the small round window. Through it she could see the cliff outside, where the man Saavedro had entered the tower from outside.

"I think we might be around the wrong way," she muttered. Jordan, who was closest to the window on the other side, peered through the window into the tower.

* * *

Saavedro was in mid-pace around the round room at the top of the tower when he glanced over at the elevator shaft across the room and saw a face through the window. He smiled... it was about time.

"Atrus? Is that you? Come to rescue your book so soon?" (Not soon enough, he said to himself. But I must make him suffer for it.) "Not yet, old friend... not yet."

* * *

Jordan watched Saavedro as he walked around to a small dish-like device attached to the railing, pulled a crumpled piece of paper from a pocket of the ragged tunic he was wearing, flattened it out and placed it on the dish. The dish lit up, the bottom part lowered itself down with a hum, flipped over and locked with the ground before flipping back up. A large cage promptly came spinning up out of the hole in the centre of the room. Inside the cage was a small pedestal, and sitting on this was what Jordan realised could only be a linking book.

After a brief whispered discussion, ending in the discovery that the door of the elevator now opened onto the outer tower door (which they still couldn't see how to unlock), Maddy reached through the hole in the elevator wall again and pressed a small green button, sending the elevator back down to the room at the bottom of the tower.

* * *

Burnt.

Burnt.

Burnt.

A few pages intact, but mostly burnt.

Burnt.

Burnt.

Potentially salvageable, but still pretty burnt.

Burnt.

Burnt.

Atrus continued to sort through the piles of books that he, Catherine and Brittany carried up into his observatory. Almost every book was burnt beyond repair. Originally, he had started with three stacks of sorted books on his desk – Burnt, Potentially Salvageable and Intact – but after the Burnt stack fell over he decided to turn it into a big pile on the floor. So far he had six books that were potentially salvageable, and only one intact – which, ironically, was for Myst.

Burnt.

He made a mental note to thank the Books Grand Master on Releeshahn for suggesting he keep his important Descriptive books somewhere safe, then remembered that it could be a while before he saw the Books Grand Master again.

Burnt.

Burnt.

The elevator door opened behind him. He didn't look up.

Burnt.

"Atrus?"

Burnt.

"Yes, Catherine?"

Catherine walked over to Atrus and put her hand on his shoulder.

"Come and have something to eat. The books aren't going to get any more burnt."

"I haven't been here very long, my love." Burnt.

"You've been here five hours, Atrus," Catherine replied gently. Atrus finally jerked his head up and looked at the clock on the wall.

"Oh." He paused for a moment longer, then stood up. "Well, I suppose I should have something to eat. As you say, the books won't get any more burnt..."


End file.
